BF 621 
. G7 

Copy 1 



THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 


BY 


L. FRANKLIN GRUBER, D.D., LL.D. 

U 




GETTYSBURG COMPILER PRINT 
GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 












Copyrighted 1923 
by L. Franklin Gruber 
St. Paul, Minnesota 



©C1A752868 

SEP 10 ’23 


-M, ( 

% 



,Gi 

THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL 1 . 
(AUGSBURG CONFESSION, ARTICLE XVIII) 

L. FRANKLIN GRUBER, D.D., LL.D. 

It is almost with a feeling of trepidation that I under¬ 
take to speak upon a subject so difficult, and one of such 
fundamental importance both for philosophy and for 
theology, as that of human freedom. It is a subject on 
which widely different views have been held, while in its 
treatment there is considerable possibility of being mis¬ 
understood. But the fact that it is difficult and that 
almost any discussion of it is liable to misinterpretation 
from one viewpoint or another, is no valid reason for 
passing it by, while its fundamental importance for the 
better understanding of so many other questions makes 
its consideration all the more necessary. Indeed, in the 
light of modern scientific thought the subject is a very 
timely one for our generation. 

Almost every century has added something to the lit¬ 
erature on the much debated freedom of the will, and it 
would seem impossible that anything essentially new 
could be added in this late age. And yet, as the develop¬ 
ment of truth is progressive, every age should throw at 
least some new light upon old truth. Even as prophecy 
can be adequately understood only in the light of historic 
fulfillment, so truth becomes ever clearer with its un¬ 
folding in connection with other and related truth. So 
should it be with such a great question as the one we are 
considering. And yet, our Confessors set forth its ele¬ 
ments in an outline form that not only must have as¬ 
tonished that august assembly at Augsburg, but that 
even today is worthy of recognition by a world advanced 
four centuries in the march of progress. 

i Lecture on the Holman Foundation at the Lutheran Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, Gettysburg, Pa., December 7, 1922.—Reprinted 
from the Lutheran Quarterly, January and April, 1923. 

1 


2 


I. THE TEXT OF THE ARTICLE. 

The Latin text of this Article given at Augsburg, in 
the exact form (verbatim et literatim) in which it is 
found in the first authorized printed edition, the cele¬ 
brated Editio Princeps, edited by Melanchthon, is as fol¬ 
lows : 

De libero arbitrio docent, quod humana voluntas 
habeat aliquam libertatem ad efficiendam ciuilem iusti- 
ciam, & deligendas res rationi subiectas Sed non habet 
vim fine spiritu sancto efficiendae iusticiae Dei, seu iusti- 
ciae spiritualis, quia animalis homo non percipit ea quae 
sunt spiritus Dei, sed haec fit in cordibus, cum per ver- 
bum spiritus sanctus concipitur. Haec totidem verbis 
dicit Augustinus lib. iij. Hypognosticon. Esse fatemur 
liberum arbitrium omnibus hominibus, habens quidem 
iudicium rationis, non per quod sit idoneum in ijs quae 
ad Deu pertinent, sine Deo aut inchoare aut certe 
peragere, sed tantum in operibus vitae praesentis tarn 
bonis qua etiam malis, Bonis dico, quae de bono naturae 
oriuntur, id est, velle laborare in agro, velle manducare 
& bibere, velle habere amicum, velle habere indumenta, 
velle fabricare domum, vxorem velle ducere, pecora 
nutrire, artem diseere diuersarum rerum bonarum, 
velle quicquid bonum ad praesentem partinet vitam. 
Quae omnia non sine diuino gubernaculo subsistunt, imo 
ex ipso & per ipsurn sunt, & esse coeperunt. Malis vero 
dico, vt est velle Idolum colere, velle homicidium &c. 

Damnat Pelagianos, & alios qui 2 docent, quod 2 sine 
spiritu sancto, solis naturae viribus possimus Deum 
super omnia diligere. Item praecepta Dei facere, quo 
ad substantiam actuum. Quamquam 2 enim externa opera 
aliquo 2 modo efficere natura possit, potest enim continere 
manus a furto, a cede, tamen interiores motus non potest 
efficere, vt timorem Dei, fiduciam erga Deum, castitatem, 
pacientiam &c. 

2 These words are contracted into forms which it is difficult 
to reproduce. 


8 


The following is the German text, exactly as found in 
the German Eclitio Princeps: 

Vom freien willen wird also geleret/ das der mensch 
etlicher masse ein freien willen hat/ eusserlich erbar zu 
leben/ vnd zu welen vnter denen dingen/so die vernunfft 
begreifft/ Aber one gnad/. hiilff vn wirckung des heil- 
igen geists/ vermag der mensch nicht Gott gefellig zu 
werden/ Gott hertzlich zufurchten/ zu lieben 3 / odder zu 
gleuben/ oder die angeporn bose lust aus dem hertzee 
zuwerffen/ sondern solchs geschicht durch den heilige 
geist/ welcher durch Gottes wort geben wird/ den 
Paulus spricht. j. Corin. ij. Der naturlich mensch ver- 
nimpt nichts vom geist Gottes. 

Vnd damit man erkennen moge/ das hierin kein 
newigkeit gelert wird/ so sind das die klaren wort 
Augustini vom freien willen/hiebey geschrieben aus dem 
dritten buch Hypognosticon/ Wir bekennen/ das jnn 
alien menschen ein freier wille ist/ denn sie haben ja alle 
naturlich angeborne verstand vnd vernunfft/ nicht das 
sie etwas vermligen mit Gott zuhandeln/ als Gott von 
hertzen zu lieben/ zufdrchten/ sondern allein jnn eusser- 
lichen wercken dieses lebens/ haben sie freiheit/ gutes 
odder boses zuwelen/ Gut mein ich/das die natur ver¬ 
mag/ als auff dem acker zu arbeiten odder nicht/ zu 
essen/ zu trincken/ zu einem freund zugehen odder 
nicht/ ein kleid an odder aus zuthun/ zu bawen/ ein 
weib zu nemen/ ein handwerck zu treiben/ vnd der 
gleichen etwas niitzlichs vnd guts zu thun/ Welches alles 
doch one Gott nicht ist noch bestehet/ Sondern alles aus 
jhm/ vnd durch jhnen ist/ Dagegen kan der mensch 
auch boses aus eigener wal furnemen/ als/fur einem 
Abgott nidder zuknien/ ein todschlag zuthun etc. 

Hie werden die jhenige verworffen so leren/ das wir 
Gottes gepot on gnad vnd heiligen geist halte konnen/ 
Den ob wir schon eusserliche werck der gepot zu thun/ 
von natur vermogen/ so konnen wir doch die hohen 

3 The words zu lieben are not found in Muller’s edition and 
therefore not in those that follow Muller. 


4 


gepot jm hertzen nicht thun/ nemlich/ Gott warhaff- 
tiglich furchten/ lieben/ Gott gleuben etc. 

As the English translation of this Article I shall give 
the one made by Dr. Krauth, found in the Book of Con¬ 
cord edited by Dr. Jacobs: 

Concerning free will, they teach, that man’s will hath 
some liberty to work a civil righteousness, and to choose 
such things as reason can reach unto: but that it hath no 
power to work the righteousness of God, or a spiritual 
righteousness, without the Spirit of God; because that 
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God: 1 Cor. 2:14. But this is wrought in the heart 
when men do receive the Spirit of God through the word. 

These things are in as many words affirmed by St. 
Augustine, Hypognosticon, lib. iii.: “We confess, that 
there is in all men a free will, which hath indeed the 
judgment of reason; not that it is thereby fitted, without 
God, either to begin or to perform anything in matters 
pertaining to God, but only in works belonging to this 
present life, whether they be good or evil. By good 
works, I mean those which are of the goodness of nature; 
as to wjll to labor in the field, to desire meat or drink, 
to desire to have a friend, to desire apparel, to desire to 
build a house, to marry a wife, to nourish cattle, to learn 
the art of divers good things, to desire any good thing 
pertaining to this present life; all of which are not with¬ 
out God’s government, yea, they are, and had their be¬ 
ginning from God and by God. Among evil things, I 
account such as these: to will to worship an image; to 
will manslaughter, and such like.” 

They condemn the Pelagians, and others, who teach, 
that by the powers of nature alone, without the Spirit 
of God, we are able to love God above all things; also 
to perform the commandments of God, as touching the 
substance of our actions. For although nature be able 
in some sort to do the external works (for it is able to 
withhold the hands from theft and murder), yet it can¬ 
not work the inward motions, such as the fear of God, 
trust in God, chastity, patience, and such like. 


6 


It will be noticed that our Confessors speak of the hu¬ 
man will with respect to two spheres, the natural and the 
spiritual. With respect to the former they say, “Con¬ 
cerning free will, they teach, that man's will hath some 
liberty to work a civil righteousness, and to choose such 
things as reason can reach unto." With respect to the 
latter they say, “But [they teach] that it hath no power 
to work the righteousness of God, or a spiritual right¬ 
eousness, without the Spirit of God." And in proof of 
this latter statement they cite the fourteenth verse of the 
second chapter of the First Epistle of Paul to the Cor¬ 
inthians, concerning the receiving of the things of the 
Spirit of God. Then in proof of both points, but 
especially of the former, they quote Augustine somewhat 
at length. And finally they close the Article with a con¬ 
demnation of Pelagians or Pelagianism. 

This brief analysis of the text suggests the method of 
treatment which I shall in the main follow. It should 
also be noted that, although the purpose of this Article 
was religious and practical, the philosophical side is not 
passed by but rather, if anything, is given more space 
than the more purely theological. And as the philoso¬ 
phical element has assumed such large proportions in the 
interests of philosophico-scientific determinism, I shall 
devote to it much more time than it should otherwise re¬ 
ceive. Moreover, there is a sense in which the philo¬ 
sophical aspect of this subject is involved in, or is funda¬ 
mental to, the theological and religious aspect, a fact 
which even our Confessors apparently ackowledge in the 
way they coordinate the two in this article and in the ful¬ 
ness with which they treat of the former. 

II. THE WILL PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED. 

It is in accord with the nature of man as a self- 
conscious being to study himself. And, however crudely 
it may have been, he has always studied himself. Treat¬ 
ing himself as if he were a non-ego, or rather an alter 
ego, he has found in his consciousness three somewhat 


6 


distinct kinds of elemental mental or psychical pheno¬ 
mena, which he has more commonly classified under the 
terms knowledge, feeling, and volition. 

1. The Will as One of Three Coordinated Famities. 

In accordance with these elements in consciousness 
we have come to recognize in man’s psychical self three 
so-called major powers or faculties, intellect of the 
power of knowing, sensibility or the power of feeling, 
and will or the power of choice and volition or the power 
of at least apparent self-direction. But while these three 
so-called divisions of the human mind are in a sense 
distinct, it is also found that they cannot definitely be 
separated in their action. The spiritual nature of man 
is thus truly three in one and one in three. Neither 
faculty can be regarded as really distinct from the spiri¬ 
tual nature of man taken as a unity. The intellect may 
be thought of as the man thinking, the sensibility as 
the man feeling, the will as the man willing or directing. 
We cannot rigidly limit any of these mental states or 
acts to but one of these three divisions. Much confusion 
in this historic controversy has been due to too mechani¬ 
cal a separation of the three faculties from one another, 
as if they represented three distinct compartments in the 
mental mechanism. Thus the will is not wholly indepen¬ 
dent either of the sensibility or of the intellect. It may 
be said to have the sensibility and the intellect as a back¬ 
ground for action ; and yet there is no strict chronologi¬ 
cal sequence in the operations of the three, so that one 
has a clearly defined priority to the others. The three 
are rather coordinated with one another in the psychical 
processes of the undivided personality. 

2. The Subordination of the Will. 

There are those who make the will depend wholly upon 


7 


inherited and acquired character, together with environ¬ 
ment, so that its operations may be said to be the pro¬ 
duct of the feelings as the result of antecedents and con¬ 
comitants. Each individual’s present self (at any mo¬ 
ment) , mentally no less than physically, would be wholly 
the accumulated effect of heredity and successive en¬ 
vironment, together with associated experience, the sum 
total of two addition columns through his two parents 
upward or backward to the original starting point in a 
common parentage not of his choosing, together with ex¬ 
ternal forces over which he has no control. Hence so- 
called free will, or will, would be only an empty term. 
Though they still speak of will, they contend that it is the 
result of constitutional sensations and sentiments (emo¬ 
tions, affections and desires),—that these give rise to 
motives, and that the necessary prevailing of the strong¬ 
est motive is what we call a volition. Our so-called 
consciousness of Volition would thus be only the reflex 
of a conflict of motives or impulses from wholly deter¬ 
mined ideas and desires. Thus the will would appar¬ 
ently be an illusion, though we think ourselves free. 
And, of course, all motives would thus be dependent 
upon preceding mental states and determining motives, 
and so on ad infinitum. In a word, the will would be sub¬ 
ject to a causal law, the result of its correlation with the 
other faculties and of the personality’s locus in the 
geneological tree. This might be called the theory of 
psychological bondage of the will. And though the way 
back would be long from the impossible beginning of this 
impossible infinite chain, there would be but a step to 
Deity as the cause of all. Such, in substance, was the 
line of argument of Jonathan Edwards, with his as¬ 
sumed infinite series of recessive antecedents Indeed, in 
his argument for determinism he treated motives as if 
they were physical forces, and thus he made them 
causes of acts of will, so that the strongest really deter¬ 
mined the will. But this confusion of ideas would logi¬ 
cally lead to psycho-physical fatalism, of which I shall 


8 


presently speak, because motives, and therefore the will, 
would thus be subject to physical laws. 

There are some who materialize the psychical pro¬ 
cesses of human personality still more, ending in a 
purely mechanistic philosophy. Indeed, these may be 
said simply to follow to their logical conclusion the pre¬ 
mises in the reasoning of those of whom I have just 
spoken. They contend that what we call willing is due 
to mechanical necessity and that there is no such thing 
as will. All thoughts, feelings, and will and resultant 
act, no less than all events in physical nature, would be 
the invariable product of an evolutionary process in ac¬ 
cordance with rigid physical laws. Thus materialism, 
or materialistic monism, would eliminate the possibility 
of freedom. And what is true of materialistic monism 
would also be equally true of what by comparison I pre¬ 
fer to call spiritualistic monism or spiritual-monism. 
The one traces so-called will and everything else to iner- 
rant physical laws; the other traces all to an equally 
rigid spiritual necessity or to the more direct arbitrary 
omnipotence of Deity. And as according to idealism, or 
idealistic monism, so-called objective reality is only a 
conception or vision of the mind, necessity would reign 
universally exactly as according to materialistic monism. 
Hence, according to any theory of monism, not only the 
will but also everything else in human personality, as 
well as external nature, would ultimately be traceable to 
a universal cause, or would in the last analysis be the 
expression of Deity. Hence this reasoning readily issues 
in pantheism, that all is God. 

This theory finds plausible confirmation in the scientific 
law of conservation. Supposedly nothing is lost, nor is 
anything gained or added to the sum total of the uni¬ 
verse. There is nothing new except by transformation, 
and the transformation itself is supposedly produced by 
inherent forces in accordance with uniform laws. It is 
thus regarded as impossible that there should be any ex¬ 
ception, that the uniformity of nature’s laws should be 
broken in the sphere of human personality. Thus free- 


9 


dom would be impossible, as it would mean that the acts 
of an individual flow from necessity as a part of the 
rigidly law-controlled physical universe. 

3. Resultant Theories of the Will—Indeterminism and 

Determinism. 

There are thus, broadly speaking, two philosophic 
theories of the will, indeterminism and determinism; 
and the theory of determinism may be divided into two 
forms, psychical determinism and physical determinism, 
although these two are not wholly distinct. 

According to indeterminism, man has the power of 
choice without compulsion, though not wholly uninflu¬ 
enced by motives and environment, and of action ac¬ 
cording to choice, his volitions thus being not wholly con¬ 
ditioned by antecedents and concomitants. In other 
words, he has power of final self-determination, each 
volition being in a sense partly a new creative act. Or, 
in a word, his will is said to be free. The fundamental 
principle of general indeterminism is expressed by Wil¬ 
liam James in the following words: “Indeterminism. .. 
says that the parts have a certain loose play on one 
another, so that the laying down of one of them does not 
necessarily determine what the others shall be.” Thus 
a choice actually made might have been different, or 
what an individual actually does is not the measure of 
the possibilities, though by direct evidence this could 
not be established, as apart from the deliverances of 
consciousness we could not determine possibilities from 
facts or already enacted events. 

According to psychical determinism, each choice or 
volition is wholly conditioned upon psychical antecedents 
and upon social and physical environment. And, ac¬ 
cording to physical determinism, all mental states and 
acts are the result of or caused by inflexible physical 
laws. Indeed, we might also speak of physiological de¬ 
terminism, with its physiological antecedents and en¬ 
vironment, a theory that has elements in common with 


10 


both the other two. Thus it is contended that, while we 
think our choice or volition free as a new beginning, it 
it because we do not know the determining factors in it. 
It is thus seen that this theory, in both or all of its 
forms, is in the last analysis really an application of the 
law of physical causation to the phenomena of the mind, 
so that all the phenomena not only of matter but also of 
mind would potentially be given or fixed. I shall also 
give a general statement as to determinism by William 
James, as follows: “It professes that those parts of the 
universe already laid down absolutely appoint and de¬ 
cree what the other parts shall be. The future has no 
ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb: the part we 
call the present is compatible with only one totality. 
Any other future complement than the one fixed from 
eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every 
part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, 
an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or 
shadow of turning.” In fact, in a strict application of 
determinism, what we call mind would really be reduced 
to a penomenon of the natural world; or, if it were still 
regarded as a distinct entity essentially different from 
the body, some theory of absolutely parallel concomi¬ 
tance or a theory of some preestablished harmony such 
as was offered by Leibnitz, would have to be resorted to 
to explain its operations. 

J. The Evidence for Freedom. 

According to determinism causality and freedom are 
incompatible with each other; and, therefore, as the law 
of causality is supposedly universal, freedom must be 
impossible. But that freedom is a reality that must be 
accounted for, is evident from certain incontrovertible 
facts which I shall set forth. And that the law of 
causality which we see operative in physical nature is 
not absolutely universal, and that this is because physi¬ 
cal nature is not the whole of reality, even the psychical 
phenomena which we are considering not belonging to 


11 


that category, I hope in the course of this discussion 
also to show. Hence the term incompatible would not 
be applicable in a correlation of the two. 

Immanuel Kant showed that the very idea of the ab¬ 
soluteness and universality of the law of causation is it¬ 
self the product of the mind no less than is our idea of 
freedom, and that it is valid only for the phenomena of 
the physical world. And although freedom seemed to 
him to be irreconeiable with pure reason, he found that 
it was one of the demands of practical reason. Hence, 
the necessary implication even from this point is, that 
the reality of another order of things not thus governed 
by the law of physical causation rests upon evidence at 
least as strong as that upon which the reality of physical 
causation rests. Indeed, it is impossible for man, cor¬ 
related with physical nature, to think except under the 
category of causality. And because of certain uniform 
operations in nature he formulates laws for the con¬ 
venience of thought and action. Then what is meant by 
the term law? It is not a cause , but simply our expres¬ 
sion for a modus operandi. In the words of the now 
sainted G. Frederick Wright, “The universe of mind and 
matter may, for all we can show to the contrary, inter¬ 
penetrate each other without conflict or concentration.” 

A. A CONFUSION THAT MUST BE AVOIDED. 

I have said that Jonathan Edwards, in his argument 
for determinism, treated motives as if they were some¬ 
how equivalent to physical forces. This is a confusion 
of ideas that must be avoided in the interest of clear 
thinking on the subject under discussion. It should be 
emphasized that motives are not of the nature of physi¬ 
cal causes, but that they are final causes looking toward 
an end. And as they do not necessitate any particular 
line of conduct, the conclusion as to determinism does 
not follow from such premises. Nor are ideas and de¬ 
sires wholly determined. 

It is true, for example, that desires often issue in 


12 


volitions; but it must not be concluded from this, as is 
often done, that desires should be classified with voli¬ 
tions, as if desires and volitions belonged together or 
were somehow identical. Desires are not the same as 
volitions, nor is there a real volitional element in them. 
From a careful analysis of mental processes it is evident 
that under normal conditions knowing is ordinarily the 
condition of feelings (in the wider sense of sensations, 
desires, etc.), and that these are the condition of voli¬ 
tion And yet, for example, a desire may be followed by 
a volition contrary to it, as one might desire to travel 
in an aeroplane through a raging thunder-cloud or to 
the moon, but does not will to do so, or does will not to 
attempt either,—in the first case because it is dangerous 
and in the second because it is impossible So one might 
feel hungry and yet go on a hunger strike. Thus often 
circumstances cause us to will in opposition to our feel¬ 
ings. Indeed, if this were not possible there would be no 
meaning to law, and no sense in having law. Thus feel¬ 
ings are not causes of volitions, though ordinarily they 
are their conditions or occasions. 

B. THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

In considering any of his immediate acts, man’s con¬ 
sciousness always represents him as the agent or cause; 
and thus in common thought uninfluenced by philosophic 
doubt, what are called our volitional activities are uni¬ 
versally considered free. In purely physical nature 
consequents follow antecedents apparently unhesitat¬ 
ingly with absolute precision, in exact accordance with 
unvarying laws, whereas man’s voluntary actions follow 
after a comparison of possible consequents or conse¬ 
quences and often after considerable deliberation and 
hesitation. He is conscious that he has the power of de¬ 
ciding or of withholding decision, and, even if he decides, 
that he can defer carrying his decision or choice into 
effect. And if consciousness of freedom itself be ac¬ 
counted for by the law of causality, it must be an effect 


13 


of an actual cause; and that actual cause must be a 
freedom that itself is actual. In other words, the law of 
causation would not hold unless consciousness of free¬ 
dom were caused by the freeedom which its deliverance 
proclaims. And as consciousness does not come under 
the law of physical causality, as I shall presently show, 
it is a psychical phenomenon that cannot be explained 
except as expressing a reality as its background. 

Nor can this consciousness of freedom be explained as 
an illusion. For, if this consciousness of freedom were 
an illusion, then the consciousness of arguing for deter¬ 
minism on the part of determinists would also be an il¬ 
lusion, even as my consciousness of arguing for freedom 
would also be an illusion. And yet, both the deter- 
minist and myself are conscious that we are repeet- 
ively setting forth two opposing sets of arguments, and 
that both of us would have the freedom of choosing 
either side for the sake of argument. But the deter- 
minist would say that even this is an illusion on the part 
of both of us. And yet, he would surely not deny that 
my arguments for freedom are not identical with his ar¬ 
guments for determinism, and that therefore these two 
sets of arguments are in defense of two diametrically 
opposite views. Then, granting this, he must surely 
see that, according to his theory, both views are equally 
determined and that he and I are contradicting instru¬ 
ments of these two contradictory views. Thus as both 
of us are acted upon by the same forces as factors in the 
alleged determinism and as these forces issue through 
us in contradictory theories as to the explanation of the 
same phenomenon or phenomena, even as is the case in 
multitudes of other instances, it need hardly be pointed, 
out that, at least as to physical determinism, we have 
reached a reductio ad absurdum. And a similar argu¬ 
ment would, of course, be applicable to psychical deter¬ 
minism. : • 

If this were not true, then there could be no such 
thing as error, for one view would be as true as the 
other, one conclusion as correct as another, however 


14 


much they differed, falsehood as reliable as truthfulness, 
vice as good as virtue, sin as noble as holiness; for each 
one and its opposite would be equally determined. And 
thus, as any theory whatsoever would be as much deter¬ 
mined as any other by the same necessitating universal 
mechanism, so that neither could be illogical and both 
would have to be equally true, my theory of freedom 
could, to say the least, be no more erroneous than -his 
theory of determinism. Then, what would be the com¬ 
parative value of what we call truth and the virtue of 
any attempt to attain it? Surely, more need not be 
added on this point. Indeed, for that matter, the very 
attempt to disprove the fact of freedom is an evidence 
for freedom of choice in this controversy, so that every 
argument against freedom is by implication an argu¬ 
ment for it. And if the theory of determinism is thus 
philosophically untenable, it must follow that the theory 
of freedom must be true. The issue of this philosophic 
argument, therefore, is in agreement with human 
consciousness on the point under consideration, namely, 
that man has the power of self-determination, that he 
has control of his volitions. 

But not only is consciousness of freedom an unmis¬ 
takable evidence of its reality, but our very attention 
to any subject of thought, indeed to this very discussion, 
implies it, as even does any conscious effort in overcom¬ 
ing obstacles. Thus our very consciousness of energy 
within us, as also our knowledge of resisting energy 
without us, necessarily implies certain freedom of action 
on our part, making such energy a part of our conscious 
knowledge. Indeed, the very possibility of experiencing 
anything necessarily implies some self-determining ac¬ 
tivity. Hence it follows that not only is consciousness 
of freedom an unmistakable evidence of its reality, but 
the very existence of consciousness itself implies the 
fact of freedom. And, surely, as consciousness is funda¬ 
mental to all our knowledge, both of self and of not- 
self, there could apparently be no stronger evidence for 


15 


freedom. It is from this evidence alone that we know 
that we are or that we exist. Thus from a simple deliv¬ 
erance of consciousness Decartes proved personal ex¬ 
istence, Cogito, orgo sum. 

But it has been attempted to set aside the validity of 
this proof of personal existence, and therefore really 
also the validity of any argument based upon conscious¬ 
ness, by reducing consciousness itself to a mere epi- 
phenomenon. But such a philosophy is really self-de¬ 
structive. If the truth of the demonstration of personal 
existence, for example, rested upon a mere epiphenom- 
enon or upon epiphenomena, then this theory of 
epiphe'nomenalism itself must also rest upon a mere 
epiphenomenon or upon epiphenomena. Hence the proof 
for personal existence has at least as much validity as 
the theory that would explain it away. Or, in terms of a 
mechanistic philosophy, if the proof of personal exist¬ 
ence is merely the result of electro-physical brain pro¬ 
cesses, then this theory of mind or consciousness as the 
result of such brain processes, must itself be the result 
of these hypothetical brain processes. Or, by the result 
of some mysterious brain processes the individual per¬ 
sonality has come to the conclusion that mind or con¬ 
sciousness is but an epiphenomenon of such brain pro¬ 
cesses and that at least as a psychical entity he does not 
exist. A non-existent personality reasoning out its own 
non-existence! And, in a similar manner, even as a 
physical corporeity the individual can prove himself to 
be a nonreality! In some such reductio ad absurdum is 
apt to end all human ratiocination that rejects funda¬ 
mental deliverances of consciousness and the resultant 
principles and laws of thought. 4 Therefore, the inevit¬ 
able conclusion is, that the consciousness of freedom 
and the existence of consciousness itself cannot be ac¬ 
counted for without the reality of freedom of which they 
are the expression. 

4 See also “Bibliotheca Sacra,” January, iqiq, pp. 130 - 131 . 


16 


C. THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE. 

Moreover, determinism would set aside all responsi¬ 
bility on the part of the agent, as wholly in conflict either 
with Omnipotence or with cosmic necessity. Indeed, he 
would cease to be an agent and be degraded to the level 
of an instrument. An idol whose internal fires consume 
its sacrificial victim can neither be praised nor blamed. 
Nor can obedience be ascribed to it for its instrumental¬ 
ity in the sacrifice, nor disobedience if the victom is not 
consumed. For that matter, the impossibility of obed¬ 
ience on its part involves the impossibility of disobed¬ 
ience. And so the possibility of obedience on the part of 
a conscious creature would involve that of disobedience. 
Hence a volition with respect to the one implies the pos¬ 
sibility of a volition with respect to the other: and with¬ 
out this freedom there could be neither merit nor de¬ 
merit. Freedom and responsibility are so related that 
neither can exist without the other. There can no more 
be freedom without responsibility than responsibility 
without freedom. This fact is confirmed by conscience, 
which is really the judicial faculty of the mind, as it 
either approves or disapproves acts in accordance with 
the light possessed by the individual. This is also im¬ 
plied in the acknowledged existence of a moral law; nor 
could a necessitated being be governed by such law or 
be either moral or immoral. Surely, if there were only 
one choice or course of action possible, and if that could 
not be avoided, no moral responsibility whatever could 
be ascribed to the individual. Then, what about the 
existence of evil? In the words of James, as used, how¬ 
ever, for another purpose, “The evil facts must be ex¬ 
plained as seeming: the devil must be whitewashed, the 
universe must be disinfected, if neither God's goodness 
nor his unity and power are to remain impugned." 

But, then, it has been contended that, if character is 
the accumulated result of heredity and of all the indi¬ 
vidual's previous states and acts and of environment, 
man could not be held responsible for any particular 


17 


volition or act. But this assumes that character is 
wholly such an accumulated result, that conduct is the 
necessary expression of character, and that all the in¬ 
dividual’s acts and states are therefore necessitated and 
not the result of ultimately free volition. If that were 
so, then as a man is so would he act. And, of course, 
reciprocally, as he would act so would he be or become. 
Thus a series of regressions would lead us back either to 
a first state of being or to a first act, as such a series by 
the very nature of the case could not be infinite. If the 
determinist would choose the former alternative, he 
would in reality have to ascribe the ultimate responsi¬ 
bility for any succeeding state or act to the Creator or 
to the inflexible evolutionary process of the whole. Thus 
as character would ultimately be a sort of invariable 
something not of his own creation, man would not be a 
responsible personality, and law and conscience would 
be meaningless terms. But that any such theory 
is philosophically untenable, and indeed self-destructive, 
1 have already pointed out and hope still further to show. 
If, on the other hand, the determinist would choose the 
latter alternative, that character is ultimately the result 
of a first act, he would have to ascribe the responsibility 
for any succeeding act or state to some primal volition 
on the part of the individual, and hence his determinism 
would break down at the first act and in so far at least 
he would become a libertarian. This latter form of the 
theory would thus not make man ultimately act neces¬ 
sarily, but his acts would, in a sense, only be certain as 
the result of a character developed from an initial act 
that could not be ascribed to necessity. Thus a distinc¬ 
tion must be made between necessity and certainty. 
That the laws of physical nature operate in a certain 
way is a necessity of so-called natural law; that a 
righteous being acts righteously is certain, but this must 
not be confounded with necessity. 

It is true that volitions often follow the line of easiest 
resistance in being conformed, for instance, to a charac- 


18 


ter that has been acquired by habit; but then the indi¬ 
vidual is responsible for the character developed by 
habitual volitions and acts that are gradually enslaving 
his will against continued freedom as to the matters in¬ 
volved. There is thus a continual struggle of the will 
with what is found in character and environment, a 
struggle between freedom and so-called necessity. We 
are, accordingly, both servant and master, a part of na¬ 
ture and nature's lord, and our triumph over it is the 
work of a lifetime. There is thus a sense in which free¬ 
dom is a growth. Desires and impulses strive for the 
mastery. But the individual must endeavor to emanci¬ 
pate himself from their control. Repeated action tends 
to develop into habit that it is difficult to overcome. 
Hence, together with the volitional element in activity 
there is often quite a strong automatic element. And 
this fact is partly the reason why some thinkers, in 
studying the former, have found only necessity in hu¬ 
man activity. Even man's natural freedom is therefore 
not unhampered. It is this fact that Goethe spoke of as 
a blending of freedom with necessity. Man is a condi¬ 
tioned being. He has his limitations as to freedom even 
in things natural. He must needs think in terms of time 
and space and act within an environment of physical 
change. And sin has even eccentuated those limitations 
of his liberty and ability. 


D. MAN NOT WHOLLY A PART OF PHYSICAL NATURE. 


In the physical world the law of causation seems to be 
absolute. Not only can there be no event without a 
cause, but the same or equal causes and conditions would 
always issue in the same effects. And thus, by regard¬ 
ing man wholly as a part of the physical universe it 
would seem that all his mental states and acts, no less 
than the outward circumstances, should issue from the 
same reign of natural law. He would be wholly subject 


19 


to the law of physical causation and would therefore cer¬ 
tainly be a necessitated being to every detail of his ac¬ 
tivities. A superman with all the data and the necessary 
mathematical tools could then truly foretell, or retell, 
every so called feeling, thought, volition and act of man’s 
whole career, and therefore every detail of human his¬ 
tory, as well as resolve the mysterious problem of sup¬ 
posed evolution and destiny. Thus the idea of freedom 
would be irreconcilable with that of the law of causation, 
for man would seem to be part of a rigid world-mechan¬ 
ism, instead of a self-determining cooperator in the un¬ 
folding of reality. But the weakness in this contention 
lies in its implied primary assumption, that man is 
wholly a part of the physical universe. 

The fallacy in the reasoning of determinists is, there¬ 
fore, in the premises, and it is similar to that of certain 
thinkers who contend that the physical universe itself is 
an infinite and eternal entity and that therefore there is 
no need of an infinite personal God, and that such a be¬ 
ing might be impossible if not unthinkable. Upon such 
premises, if one might then still speak of a Deity, the 
Deity would Himself be confined within that universe, 
and therefore be subject to the universal reign of the law 
of causation, and would be limited at every point by uni¬ 
versal nature. Of such a Deity one might more correctly 
speak as it than as He. And, indeed, in the last analy¬ 
sis, not only could there be no freedom to such Deity, but 
also strictly speaking no intelligence and design. The 
ultimate reality would thus be resolved into necessity. 
Such, then, would be the God deduced from physical pre¬ 
mises. Thus God, instead of being Creator, would be 
part of an uncreated entity striving for expression. 5 

In the interest of clearness, permit me somewhat to 
digress. These thinkers, as I have said, regard the 
physical universe as both eternal and infinite, and all its 

5 For a fuller development of this point see “The Theory of a 
Finite and Develooing Deity Examined,” “Bibliotheca Sacra,” Oc¬ 
tober, 1918; also, “Is the Doctrine of an Infinite and Unchangeable 
Deity Tenable,” “Lutheran Quarterly,” January, 1921. 


20 


marvelous processes as due to ceaselessly acting inherent 
forces. And thus they extend the meaning of the term 
universe so as to include all being . But upon examina¬ 
tion it is found that the conception of such a universe 
rests upon what is really a “reasoning in a circle. ,, Every 
event in it must be due to another event or events as its 
cause, and so on, until the supposedly infinite circle must 
return to and close with itself. But as elsewhere shown, 
“If we analyze events, or so-called effects, in nature and 
inerrantly trace them to their immediate causes in all 
their complexities, then likewise trace these so-called 
causes to their complex causes, etc., etc., we should at 
last arrive at a so-called cause or complexity of causes 
that was not produced in a similar way. It would be the 
first of the indefinite series of so-called causes, which 
itself is caused by an only real, because uncaused, cause, 
properly called the First Cause. This series of succes¬ 
sive causes must be finite, even as we could have no in¬ 
finite number in a row of balls.” 6 

And that First Cause must be different from the uni- 
verse of secondary causes and can therefore not be a 
physical entity. Hence the theory that the physical uni¬ 
verse is all, breaks down, and all its events, however 
linked together by a law of antecedent and consequent, 
must necessarily be due to an uncaused cause, or one 
whose cause is in itself, acting directly and wholly diff¬ 
erently from any secondary physical causes. Such a 
physical universe as a given and necessarily closed sys¬ 
tem can thus be only a secondary and therefore a caused 
entity, whose great infinite Primary as its cause must 
be non-physical, or spiritual, and therefore not bound 
by the physical laws of the created universe. 

Hence the argument that there is nothing that does 
not come under the supposedly absolute reign of physical 
law breaks down in the light of a consideration of the 
physical universe as a whole. And thus the question 
which the exponents of the theory of absolute determin- 

6 “Whence Came the Universe?” p. 83. 


21 


ism have considered closed is reopened. And without 
making at this point of our argument a more sweeping 
claim, there remains at least the possibility that a simi¬ 
lar reasoning would lead us to a similarly free or un¬ 
bound spiritual cause in the personality of man. Thus 
we might seem to be driven to acknowledge that, which¬ 
ever view one took on this point, he would be confronted 
by a dilemma; for if he contended that all is necessitated 
he would have to account for the supposed illusion of 
freedom, and if he contended for freedom he would have 
to account for its phenomena as not due to the uni¬ 
formities of nature. That in the former case the 
dilemma would be real, should be evident from what I 
have already said; and that in the latter case the dilemma 
is only apparent I hope presently to show by showing 
that the phenomena of freedom are not due to physical 
causes. 

It is true that we cannot fully understand the how of 
freedom because it rests upon some facts and processes 
that are even more difficult of explanation than freedom 
itself. Indeed, at first thought it is apparently impos¬ 
sible by logical processes to reconcile freedom with causa¬ 
tion; for the very idea of cause in its complexity would 
seem to imply that of mechanical necessity, while that of 
freedom supposedly implies causelessness. But even our 
attempt to understand or explain freedom, or for that 
matter even to understand supposed necessity, involves 
the very freedom we are considering or endeavoring to 
explain. And, for that matter, as might be shown, only a 
free personality can be a true cause, while so-called 
necessitating mechanical causes are, in their last analy¬ 
sis, not causes but only instrumentalities.. But the 
phenomenon of what is universally regarded in common 
thought as freedom with its unmistakable manifesta¬ 
tions, confronts us as a reality, as I have shown, on 
every side, even in a discussion like this. And as free¬ 
dom cannot be possible to a purely physical being, man 
must be more than a purely physical being. 

If any one contends, therefore, for the absoluteness of 


22 


conservation in the physical universe, that all is given 
and nothing is ever taken away, I contend, even in ad¬ 
vance of my more elaborate argument on this point, that 
he is compelled to acknowledge that within that same 
otherwise given universe of secondary causes there is an 
entity that is not wholly included in that which is given, 
and that partakes of the nature of a primary with power 
of initiation to cause that which is new in that which is 
given, and that uses that which is given as both its in¬ 
strumentality and its habitation. Thus by an exercise 
of will a person can decide to lift a pound or a hundred¬ 
weight, or he can decide not to lift either, and by carry¬ 
ing his decision into action he can actually lift or not 
lift either. And thus, because of the universality of 
gravitation, he can affect or not affect, however infin¬ 
itesimally, the whole physical universe, or by lifting the 
one weight or the other he can affect it proportionately 
to a different degree. 7 


E. THE PSYCHICAL OR SPIRITUAL WORLD NOT GOVERNED BY 

PHYSICAL LAWS. 

By applying the doctrine of the uniformity of nature to 
personality we would, of course, be driven to the conclu¬ 
sion that under identical circumstances different indi¬ 
viduals would think the same thoughts, experience the 
same feelings and will the same actions. But this con¬ 
clusion rests upon the erroneous assumption that the 
laws of physical nature hold equally in the spiritual do¬ 
main. And if this is not borne out by the facts, the con¬ 
clusion must be untenable. It was in the application of 
physical law to the explanation of psychical phenomena 
that the fallacy in the reasoning of such men as Hobbes 
and Spinoza lay. If it were true, as Hobbes assumed, 
that mental processes were only physical motions, then 
of course freedom of the will as a real creation of motion 
would be impossible. And so Spinoza’s contention that 


7 Ibid., 77 sqq. 


23 


the same necessity reigns in the psychical sphere as in 
the physical world, was based upon the mere assumption 
that the same natural laws govern both. 

The error in such reasoning lies in assuming that, 
because mental acts are accompanied by certain physical 
or physiological processes in the brain and nervous sys¬ 
tem, those mental acts must necessarily be due to the 
same cause or causes to which the physical processes in 
the brain and nervous system are due. And because the 
latter are apparently necessitated, the assumption has 
been that the former must also be necessitated. And 
then, of course, it has been debated whether one might 
not be the cause of the other. But whether the physical 
be the cause of the mental, as the materialist holds, or 
the mental the cause of the physical, would still be a 
question. If the former, then necessity would appar¬ 
ently reign over all and there would really be no psychi¬ 
cal personality. If the latter, as we contend, then the 
physical processes in brain and nervous system would 
still be governed by physical laws, but their cause would 
be the action of the personality of man. Hence, while 
the effect in brain and nervous system comes under the 
reign of physical law, the personality that is its cause, 
as a free agent, would not thus come under that law. 
This is what I choose to call psycho-physical freedom, 
that man has the power to choose or act by his own will 
as an immediate cause without compulsion by external 
physical forces, or that he has the freedom of the will to 
act. This virtually corresponds to what some men like 
Friedrich Paulsen calls psychological freedom. It is true 
that this brings us face to face with the great problem 
of the how of contact , in operation, of the psychical with 
the physical in the individual personality. But this 
problem does not bring up any more difficult elements 
for resolution than would confront us in any other at 
tempted solution. And, for that matter, the whole diffi¬ 
cult subject of epistemology is involved in any attempted 
solution whatsoever. 

It is thus manifest that the fallacy in the reasoning on 


24 


the part of those who argue against human freedom, lies 
in extending the unity and uniformity of physical nature 
to include the domain of the spiritual. The one is gov¬ 
erned by physical laws and is an entity of secondary 
causes, the other is not thus governed, but rather by 
little understood laws and causes peculiar to that do¬ 
main. But as our ideas of cause are derived from our 
contact with physical nature, we quite naturally apply 
that idea of cause to man's spiritual nature, and also, as 
it were, anthropomorphically to the Deity. 


F. MAN AS A PERSONALITY, A PRIMARY OR AN INITIATING CAUSE. 

It is true that we still quite commonly trace human 
actions to certain causes or occasions in the indiviual and 
in his environment. But as in tracing events in physical 
nature through their multiplicity of secondary causes till 
we must stop at a First Cause, a pure cause that is in no 
way also an effect, so in tracing a man’s actions we must 
also stop at a cause that is not under the laws of physical 
causation as though it were itself only one of a series of 
physical causes. Call it the soul, the personality, the ego; 
it is the living agent who within certain limitations acts 
with freedom as a wonderful trinity in unity and who is 
free. And though the background of his character and 
the environment quite generally enter as factors into his 
immediate volitions and actions, the ultimate reason for 
choosing or for refusing, for doing or omitting to do, lies 
in himself as a free personality. 

There is thus a personal or spiritual element in man 
that has the power of initiation and of change in the 
world-process, as I have already indicated, while his 
physical element is bound up with that world-process by 
the law of causation except in so far as it is modified by 
that personal or spiritual element. Or, in a word, man 
has the “power of self-determination,” that is, he is the 
author of, and has the ultimate reason in himself for, his 
own acts. It is therefore not the will alone that is self- 


25 


determining, but the will in cooperation with the other 
faculties, in a word, the man as a personality For in 
speaking of the will alone there is thus a sense in which 
it is at least partly governed by the cooperating faculties, 
and in which, separated from the others, it is not wholly 
free. Thus even a man’s character, both inherited and 
acquired, would at least figure in that self-determination. 
But even that character is his largely because of accu¬ 
mulated acts and thoughts. 

This is what I would call psychological or psychical 
freedom, that the will itself is uncaused by, or not sub¬ 
ject to, the causal law of physical nature, that it acts ac¬ 
cording to its own law, or law peculiar to itself. Hence, 
while the will is not subject to extrinsic law, it does not 
act arbitrarily in total independence of the other facul¬ 
ties and therefore not without what might be called in¬ 
trinsic law. And yet, the personality willing as a unity 
is ultimately free, or, in other words, he may be said to 
have the freedom or ability, or the will, to will. And it 
need hardly be said that this psychological freedom na¬ 
turally includes the psycho-physical freedom of which I 
have spoken. And, indeed, without this psychical or 
psychological freedom psycho-physical freedom would be 
only a name without a reality. For psycho-physical free¬ 
dom of will would simply mean to will as one does, and 
would therefore not really express freedom unless it had 
as its background the ability to will as one wills to will. 
Moreover, this twofold freedom is possible only in a be¬ 
ing that is a real agent, one that is above nature, though 
he be of nature, one that partakes of the nature of a 
creative primary in the universe of secondary causes. 
And to show that man is such a being is the burden of 
this argument. And this is exactly what the creative 
account in Genesis declares man to be, a free personality 
with power of choice like a creative primary, made in 
the image of his Creator. And it is precisely in this par¬ 
ticular that man’s fall carried with it the loss of liberty 
or ability as to things spiritual, of which I shall speak 
later. This psychical freedom corresponds virtually to 


26 


what has been called metaphysical freedom under two 
aspects, by Dr. Paulsen. 

5. Some Objections Answered. 

It has been contended that freedom in man implies 
limitation in the Deity as the Creator of such a free per¬ 
sonality; for He could supposedly not foresee or fore¬ 
know the future thoughts and deeds of such a being. But 
the error in such a contention lies in reasoning about 
God’s knowledge in physico-logical terms based upon 
environing concatenated physical events as causes and 
effects. An infinite being would not arrive at knowledge 
through such ratiocination, as He would know directly 
without the processes of discursive reasoning. With 
such a being there could be no necessary distinction in 
knowledge between secondary causes and effects, be¬ 
tween past and future, and therefore between premises 
and conclusions, and, for that matter, between time and 
space. Indeed, as an inference from the general prin¬ 
ciple of relativity, this last distinction seems to be only a 
practical one but does not have any existence in reality. 

It has been contended, moreover, that such arbitrary 
freedom of the will would make men dangerous units of 
society, that in general it would expose parts to danger 
from other parts. But this is a point made rather for 
the sake of argument, for those who raise that objection 
no doubt realize that the will normally does not act alone, 
or apart from the feelings and the intelligence. And 
these normally act as a governor for the will. I said 
normally, for certainly crime is the result of volitions 
carried into action without proper regard to the feelings 
and the intellect. In short, it is in so far the mark of 
an unbalanced mind, unbalanced at least on the side of 
the will. And that abnormal condition may vary from 
the petty wrong-doer to the hardened murderer, and even 
from the simple paranoic to the violently insane. Indeed, 
What are deeds of insanity but acts prompted by a will 
not under the control of reason? For insanity ranges 


27 


from partial to total dethronement of reason; but in such 
dethronement of reason the will, or rather volition, is no 
longer the free expression of a fully conscious respons¬ 
ible personality. 

6. The Unavoidable Conclusion. 

From what I have thus far said, it need hardly be 
argued further to show that man’s psychical nature is 
not subject to the law of causation, except in so far as 
such subjection is voluntary for the working out of its 
purposes. Newton’s laws of motion do not hold for 
man’s psychical nature. He is himself an initiating 
cause. He can break into sequences which nature of 
necessity would otherwise uninterruptedly mechanically 
different strength within, and chooses or rules for action 
follow, change their course and introduce new chains of 
sequences. His will (or the personality willing) stands 
as it were pivoted within the universal sweep of cosmic 
events without, and even among emotions and desires of 
made possible, not necessary, from reasons in his created 
nature. He even makes the elements of his environment 
instruments or tools in his endeavor to attain his ends. 
And he could choose and rule differently from what he 
does. It is this that enables man to say “I,” as a being 
greater than, and in his freedom independent of, the uni¬ 
verse as the alter ego. 

Philosophically considered, man is therefore superior 
to nature, using it within certain limitations to attain his 
purposes, but not being used as a mere cog-wheel in its 
mighty machinery for the grinding out of predetermined 
ends He is a free moral responsible agent. And it can 
truthfully be said that, although he can be compelled to 
do contrary to that which his will dictates in volitions, 
he cannot be compelled to will contrary to that which his 
will dictates, for then volition and will would be ex¬ 
pressed in compulsion. Truly, in this respect, the chain¬ 
less mind cannot be conquered. His freedom therefore 


28 


enables him within certain limitations to determine his 
own life. And to deny that freedom is to deny the ex¬ 
istence of man's spiritual nature and the reality of spiri¬ 
tual life. 


7 Some Logical Inferences or deductions 


A. AS TO THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 

If the will, or the personality willing, is thus not sub¬ 
ject to the causal law of the world-process, but is itself 
the cause of its decisions, however much it may be influ¬ 
enced by physical environment, then it must follow that 
in his primal choice of evil man alone was responsible. 
And his freedom must have been much more unhampered 
or complete in his primal state before he brought certain 
restrictions, especially as to spiritual things, upon him¬ 
self. And although man was created no less than the 
environing universe, and is therefore not an uncaused 
being, the great Cause of his being is not the cause of his 
acts in the sense in which He is the cause of the opera¬ 
tions of purely physical nature. Man was endowed in 
his creation with this very power of freedom as a new 
primary causal agent. It is a confusion of ideas to attri¬ 
bute man's acts, especially those of evil, to the Creator 
because He is the cause of man's being, for the creature 
is by creation made in this particular a new creator. To 
trace the cause of a personal act on the part of man to 
man’s Creator, is to out-Adam Adam, for he at least did 
not go beyond Eve in placing the blame for his sin, even 
as Eve did not go beyond the serpent. Neither blamed 
it upon Him who created them with the power of free¬ 
dom. Nor did even the serpent attempt to fasten the 
blame on God. 

It is true that, if neither man nor any other free per- 


29 


sonality had ever been created, there would never have 
been any moral evil in the universe, using the term uni¬ 
verse even in the widest sense. But, then, neither would 
there have been any moral good on the part of a purely 
mechanistic creation. And to say that a Creator who 
could not have created a universe with morally free per¬ 
sonalities that could not sin could not be omnipotent, 
would be to assert a palpable contradiction, for such a 
personality, one that could not sin, would not be morally 
free. To declare that such a Creator could not be om¬ 
nipotent, would be demanding of Him the creation of a 
being with incompossible elements or attributes, which 
would imply an altogether unwarranted interpretation of 
the term omnipotence. And it would surely be a strange 
presumption of infinite knowledge, on the part of a finite 
creature, to hold that a Creator, who foreknew that such 
certain created personality would sin and who yet would 
create him, could not be morally good. But why even 
speak of foreknowing, for as already said, to Him there 
is no necessary before nor after in time, even as to Him 
there is no necessary before nor after in space. Surely 
all our attempts to attain ultimate truth by anthropomor¬ 
phizing Deity must prove futile. We cannot read more 
into conclusions than we have in the premises. The key 
to the only possible solution of the problem of evil is thus 
found in created personality acting as a free agent. Nor 
would such a being in the least jeopardize the omnipo¬ 
tence or goodness of God. 


B. ANY THEORY OF MONISM UNTENABLE. 


As freedom can unquestionably have no place in any 
theory of monism as we have seen, and as it is neverthe¬ 
less a fact that must be accounted for, the inescapable 
conclusion is that monism is untenable as an explanation 
of reality. Materialistic or Haeckelian monism is only 
the extreme swinging of the pendulum away from the 


30 


reality of the spiritual world, while Hegelian monism is 
the swinging of the pendulum to the opposite extreme. 
The one puts the whole emphasis upon the reality of the 
material world and the other puts it upon the spiritual. 
The one makes both man's mental and his physical states 
and acts the expression of physical law, the other makes 
them the expression of the philosophic abstraction of the 
Absolute; and according to both therefore all is reduced 
to necessity or is determined. And thus, in the light of 
what has been said, both are erroneous. But there are 
at least some elements of truth in both. There is so- 
called matter and also spirit, and so far as the physical 
universe is what is called material the latest science 
tends to make it a monistic reality, the so-called primary 
elements being undoubtedly of one primary substance. 8 
But that truth, in the light of the whole of reality even 
within the range of human experience and observation, 
not even to speak of the deliverances of consciousness as 
to man's own inner nature, is only a half truth. Not to 
speak of a creative Deity rationally demanded by the 
very existence of the physical universe as its necessary 
cause, a Deity therefore wholly different from the uni¬ 
verse and therefore immaterial or spiritual, even in man 
we have the elements of matter and spirit that cannot be 
reconciled with monism. But these amply satisfy the 
demands of dualism. It is true that this extends the 
difficulty to the to us mysterious interaction between 
spirit and matter and to the consciousness of that inter¬ 
action on the part of spirit. But at least this far we are 
on certain ground, that neither materialistic monism, 
which would explain mind or spirit in terms of matter, 
nor idealistic monism, which would explain matter as the 
projection of mind, nor even spiritualistic or spiritual 
monism, which reduces all to the Absolute, are adequate 
explanations of the universe we know. And according 
to none of these theories could there be freedom, of 
which we are, however, conscious and which is incon- 


8 Ibid. Chapter VII. 


31 


trovertibly proved by the facts, as the invariable law of 
antecedent and consequent would reign upon the basis 
of any one of them. Nor can materialistic monism and 
spiritual monism be somehow united into a psycho-mon¬ 
ism, for the same difficulty would confront us if we tried 
to read into such a mongrel philosophic theory the idea 
of freedom. But there is this ultimate truth in monism, 
that before creation God or spirit alone existed, and we 
are not so sure but that after physical creation will have 
subserved its purposes there may again be only that 
which is spiritual, God and created spiritual personali¬ 
ties. 


C. ADVOLUTION AND DEVOLUTION VERSUS CONSERVATION 

AND EVOLUTION. 

Now, as already pointed out, it is held by scientifico- 
philosophic determinists, that the law of conservation is 
absolute and universal, and that the whole of reality, in 
which there is a tendency to include even such Deity as 
by them may still be allowed, is therefore in process of ev¬ 
olution, or, in other words, is a Becoming , and that all the 
developments in the evolutionary process are only trans¬ 
formations by eternally operating resident forces. But 
it needs only to be pointed out that such a law of abso¬ 
lute and universal conservation would preclude the very 
possibility of at least such all-inclusive evolution. Surely, 
if that law were absolute the aggregate of all energy 
would be a fixed or constant quantity, and upon such a 
basis there could be no development in the aggregate. 
And if some previous necessary involution be resorted 
to to make the theory work, it would be in contradiction 
of the very contention that conservation is absolute and 
universal, for then at some time at least the law did not 
hold. And the exception once being allowed, the question 
of successive and perhaps continuous possible breaks in 
that law would be reopened all along the line. And thus 
the theory of absolute conservation and that of universal 


32 


evolution could at least not both be true. And, I may 
add, that an accumulation of evidence is more and more 
confirming me in my conviction that neither is univers¬ 
ally true. I hold that it is not evolution coupled with 
conservation that constitutes the formula of the scientific 
world-process, but that it is advolution coupled with de¬ 
volution. The former holds sway in the psychical realm 
and the latter in the physical. That the law of conserva¬ 
tion is not absolute and universal, but is only relatively 
true with reference to a closed system, is more and more 
being believed by certain outstanding physicists. In¬ 
deed, some of the most eminent men of science are the 
most modest in their claims for that law. Recent inves¬ 
tigations into the nature of matter and energy certainly 
seem to indicate that that great law can no longer be 
accepted unchallenged. As the mass and inertia of the 
constitutive electrons of so-called matter have been 
shown to vary with velocity and as mass is essentially 
electrical and therefore apparently identical with en¬ 
ergy, both matter and energy (or rather matter or en¬ 
ergy, or matter-energy) are variables. 9 And thus the 
universe as a whole would undoubtedly come under that 
same category. And as is illustrated in the incessant 
disintegration of radioactive substances, a process be¬ 
lieved to be universal in the so-called constitutive pri¬ 
mary elements of what we call matter, the great law of 
the physical universe is expressed by the term devolution 
and not by the term evolution. And if it be contended 
that man’s mental acts and states are only the result of 
electro-chemical action in the brain, then we should have 
a transmutation of physical energy into something hy¬ 
perphysical or categorically wholly different, and there¬ 
fore also in the loss of energy in the accepted meaning 
of that term. And, if men may still insist upon using the 
term evolution for what they believe to be indicated by 
certain phenomena, that evolution might then be regarded 
as only the throbbing of a local wave in the pulsations of 
what might some time after all end in quiescence, if not 

9 Ibid. Chapter VII; also pp. 209-210. 


33 


in non-existence. But, on the other hand, in the asso¬ 
ciated psychical realm there is a very manifest aggre¬ 
gate development or enlargement, ever moving from 
high to higher. Thus successive generations come and 
go and leave to their successors the heritage of their lives 
and of their achievements with new, and in the aggregate 
ever greater potentialities and possibilities. And in the 
process the physical elements that are taken up and as¬ 
sociated with the psychical are exalted and endowed, as 
though by a higher creative process, with new properties, 
even as in the recreation and reconstituting of that body 
in the resurrection we believe it will partake of still 
higher spiritual properties. Thus the process of devolu¬ 
tion would be arrested and swept into the stream of that 
of advolution in so far as the physical would come within 
the range of the psychical. The lower would thus, as 
we should expect, be dominated by, and elevated by as¬ 
sociation into at least the borderlands of, the higher. And 
from the viewpoint of traducianism it might then quite 
appropriately be said of the creative process in genera¬ 
tion that it 

“A soul shall draw from out the vast 
And strike its being into bounds, 

And, moved thro' life of lower phase, 

Result in man, be born and think, 

And act and love, a closer link 
Betwixt us and the crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 

On knowledge; under whose command 
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand 
Is nature like an open book; 

No longer half-akin to brute, 

For all we thought and loved and did, 

And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 
Of what in them is flower and fruit.” 


34 


Surely, in such a conception of God’s modus operandi 
in His created cosmos there is abundant room for free¬ 
dom of the will, for the doctrines of sin, election, re¬ 
generation and providence, as also there is for those of 
the passing away of the earth and the heavens that now 
are and of the coming of new heavens and a new earth, 
of the triumphing over or the supplanting of that which 
is natural by that which is spiritual. 

Nor can such a view of the cosmos and of the continued 
creative processes be in the least in conflict with the mar¬ 
velous outline story of the creation and of the fall of 
man, for man’s perfection in creation must not be un¬ 
derstood to have precluded the possibility of progress nor 
must it be confounded with a prospective relative com¬ 
pleteness in the greater hereafter. 

III. THE WILL THEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 

So far I have discussed natural freedom, a freedom 
which, if actually his, not only was man’s before the fall 
but also to only perhaps a somewhat less degree is his 
still. I have set forth the two philosophical theories of 
the will called indeterminism and determinism, and trust 
I have at least partially succeeded in showing that the 
theory of determinism in either or all of its forms is un¬ 
tenable, or that the evidence is almost squarely on the 
side of indeterminism with the modifications pointed out. 
But there is another view that must now be considered. 
It is the theological doctrine of impotence as to spiritual 
things on the part of the unregenerate personality, as a 
consequence of the fall. Thus fallen man is held to be 
incapable of certain volitions pertaining to the spiritual 
life and the spiritual world. According to determinism 
the so-called volitions would be determined by environ¬ 
ment and antecedent states of mind, or by the causal 
law of physical nature, even as also supposedly would 
then have been the case before the fall. But this theory 
has nothing directly to do with the doctrine of such 
spiritual impotence since the fall. Much confusion has 


35 


arisen in certain quarters from a confounding of these 
two, as if man's spiritual impotence were the same as 
philosophic determinism. It seems to be a question as to 
man's spiritual ability or inability perhaps more than 
one of free will that has been the subject especially of 
the older theologians. 

In the Christian conception man by creation belongs 
to two different realms, a fact involved even in what I 
have already said, and which is clearly taught or im¬ 
plied in numerous passages of Scripture, such, for ex¬ 
ample, as the account of Christ's conversation with Nico- 
demus and certain very striking statements in the 
epistles of St. Paul. Man is in the world of nature, but 
in his spiritual self he is not of that world. His present 
life is rooted in the natural, but it is to be attuned to the 
spiritual. But in his spiritual nature he is not what he 
might or ought to be, a fact that is confirmed by con¬ 
science and human history. He has been enslaved by 
sin, so that, unless he is born again a new and free 
creature in Christ Jesus he cannot rise above his fallen 
self and be righteous. To set forth this fact is more 
particularly the purpose of this Article of our great 
Confession. 

Before I enter upon this more purely theological con¬ 
sideration of this Article it is important to make some 
preliminary explanations. A distinction has been made 
between man's will, theologically considered, before the 
fall, after the fall in his unregenerate state, after re¬ 
generation, and after the resurrection of the body. With 
man's will before the fall, after regeneration, and after 
the resurrection of the body, this part of the Article un¬ 
der consideration has nothing directly to do. It is con¬ 
cerned with the will or ability of man in things spiritual 
after the fall but before he is brought under the regen¬ 
erating grace of the Holy Spirit. It has to do with what 
I shall, for the sake of clearness in discussion, call the 
question of spiritual freedom, whether there still re¬ 
mains to unregenerate man the freedom of the will as to 
spiritual things. 


36 


In the discussion of the philosophic aspect of the will, 
I distinguished between what I called psycho-physical 
freedom and psychological or psychical freedom and 
showed that, with certain limitations, man is free in both 
senses and that the former freedom is included in the 
latter. I shall now distinguish between psychological 
freedom and what I am calling spiritual freedom. Ac¬ 
cording to the conception of psychological freedom I 
have so far set forth, it belongs to man in his natural 
state, to his life in this world and in his association with 
his fellowmen. But by spiritual freedom I mean to ex¬ 
press the freedom or ability of man with respect to the 
spiritual kingdom. 

1 The Confessions on the Will in Things Spiritual 

After setting forth man’s ability of working civil 
righteousness, our Confessors at Augsburg express 
themselves as to the impotence of man in spiritual 
things in the following words: “But [they teach]that it 
[the will] hath no power to work the righteousness 
of God, or a spiritual righteousness, without the Spirit of 
God; because that the natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God: 1 Cor. 2: 14. But this is 
wrought in the heart when men do receive the Spirit of 
God through the word.” 

And in order that we may have Melanchthon’s own 
explanation of this point, also generally accepted by the 
Church, we refer to the Apology (Article XVIII). After 
developing the point concerning the freedom of the will 
in working outward righteousness, he proceeds as fol¬ 
lows : “But it is false that the man does not sin, who per¬ 
forms the works of the commandments without grace.. . 
For human hearts without the Holy Ghost are without 
the fear of God; without trust toward God, they do not 
believe that they are hearkened to, forgiven, benefited, 
and preserved by God. Therefore they are godless. For 
‘neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit’ (Matt. 


37 


7:18). And‘without faith it is impossible to please 
God’ (Heb. 11: 6).” 

“Therefore, although we concede to free will the liberty 
and power to perform the outward works of the law, yet 
to the free will we do not ascribe these spiritual matters, 
viz., truly to fear God, truly to believe God, truly to be 
confident and hold that God regards us, hearkens to us, 
forgives us, etc. These are the true works of the First 
Table, which the heart cannot render without the Holy 
Ghost, as Paul says (1 Cor. 2: 14) : ‘The natural man/ 
i.e. man using only natural strength, ‘receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God/ ” 

This is in perfect accord with Luther’s matchless ex¬ 
planation of the Ten Commandments, in which he makes 
all obedience flow from the fear and love of God, so that 
it is not a mere obedience to a “Thou shalt not,” but an 
obedience that rises from that negative obedience to 
possible works of love, as for instance in his explanation 
of the fifth commandment, “We should so fear and love 
God as not to do our neighbor any bodily harm or injury, 
but rather assist and comfort him in danger and want.” 

To continue the main thread of this argument, in Lu¬ 
ther’s wonderful explanation of the Third Article of the 
Creed we have these words on man’s spiritual impotence: 
“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength 
believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him; but the 
Holy Ghost has called me through the gospel, enlightened 
me by His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the 
true faith,” etc. And this spiritual impotence of man 
likewise underlies the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, 
and is implied in Luther’s explanation of them, as, for 
instance, in the First Petition, “Hallowed be thy name,” 
of which he says, “The name of God is indeed holy in it¬ 
self ; but we pray in this petition that it may be hallowed 
also by us.” And so in Luther’s explanation of the sacra¬ 
ments every spiritual good is attributed to God alone, 
for the edifying reception of which the heart is prepared 
by the Holy Ghost. So in his elaborate explanation of 
the Third Article of the Creed, in the Large Catechism, 


88 


he says, among other things, “For neither you nor I could 
even know anything of Christ, or believe on Him and 
have Him for our Lord, except as it is offered to us and 
granted to our hearts by the Holy Ghost through the 
preaching of the gospel. The work is finished and ac¬ 
complished; for Christ, by His sufferings, death, resur¬ 
rection, etc., has acquired and gained the treasure for us. 
But if the work remained concealed, so that no one 
knew of it, then it were in vain and lost. That this trea¬ 
sure therefore might not lie buried, but be appropriated 
and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth and 
be proclaimed, in which He gives the Holy Ghost to bring 
this treasure home and apply it to us. Therefore sancti¬ 
fication is nothing else than bringing us to Christ to re¬ 
ceive this good, to which, of ourselves, we could not at¬ 
tain.” 

Thus not only is the treasure provided by God in 
Christ, but also we are brought to that treasure in Christ 
through the Holy Ghost. The whole work of regenera¬ 
tion and sanctification is represented as God’s work, nor 
can man contribute any of the spiritual elements. 

But to these citations, from the Confessors, on man’s 
total spiritual impotence we must add the testimony of 
the second generation of Reformers, as set forth in the 
Formula of Concord. In Chapter II of the First Part or 
Epitome, we find these words: “Concerning this subject, 
our doctrine, faith and confession is, that, in spiritual 
things, the understanding and reason of man are (alto¬ 
gether) blind, and, from their own powers, understand 
nothing. .. Likewise we believe, teach and confess that 
the will of unregenerate man is not only turned away 
from God, but also has become an enemy of God, so that 
it has inclination and desire for that which is evil and 
contrary to God. . . Yea, as unable as a dead body is to 
quicken and restore itself to bodily, earthly life, just so 
unable is man, who by sin is spiritually dead, to raise 
himself to spiritual life. . . Yet God the Holy Ghost ef¬ 
fects conversion, not without means; but uses for this 
purpose the preaching and hearing of God’s Word... 


39 


For without His grace, and if He do not grant the in¬ 
crease, our willing and running, our planting, sow¬ 
ing and watering, all are nothing, as Christ says (John 
15: 5) : ‘Without me, ye can do nothing/ In these short 
words He denies to the free will all power, and ascribes 
everything to God’s grace, in order that no one may 
boast before God: 1 Cor. 1: 29.” 

And in the Second Part, or the Solid Declaration, 
Chapter II, we find the following: “Namely, that in 
spiritual and divine things the intellect, heart and will of 
the unregenerate man cannot, in any way, by their own 
natural powers, understand, believe, accept, think, will, 
begin, effect, do, work or concur in working anything, 
but they are entirely dead to good, and corrupt; so that 
in man’s nature, since the fall, there is, before regenera¬ 
tion, not the least spark of spiritual power remaining 
still present, by which, of himself, he can prepare him¬ 
self for God’s grace, or accept the offered grace, or, for 
and of himself, be capable of it, or apply or accommodate 
himself thereto, or by his own powers, be able of himself, 
as of himself, to aid, do, work or concur in working any¬ 
thing for his conversion either entirely, or in half, or in 
even the least or most inconsiderable part, but he is the 
servant (and slave) of sin (John 8: 34; Eph. 2: 2; 2 Tim. 
2:26). Hence the natural free will, according to its per¬ 
verted disposition and nature, is strong and active only 
with respect to what is displeasing and contrary to God.” 

2 The Testimony of Scripture 

Let us now see whether this teaching of our Confes¬ 
sors is logically and Scripturally tenable. In that won¬ 
derful account of the fall of man, however much of it 
may even be regarded as figurative, great truths are in¬ 
volved in every sentence. When man was placed into 
Eden, the Lord said, “Of every tree of the garden thou 
mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for the day that 
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 
2: 16-17). There was freedom, freedom to eat of all the 


40 


trees, and even of the so-called forbidden tree. But the 
penalty for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil was the loss of that freedom in death, and that 
death was to follow in the day of the eating. And upon 
the fall man was driven out of Eden and deprived of the 
ability of eating also of the tree of life and thus to live 
forever, while at the gate God placed the Cherubim and 
the flame of a sword to keep the way of that tree of life. 
His ability in spiritual matters, as we might express it, 
was thus totally taken away. But, then, what shall we 
understand by spiritual things? For a definition I shall 
quote Quenstedt as probably quite acceptably expressing 
the meaning attached to that expression by the Church. 
He says: “By spiritual things we mean such emotions 
and actions as are prescribed by the Law and the Gospel, 
and can be produced only by the motion and action of the 
Spirit of God, so that they are the true knowledge of God 
according to the measure of written revelation, detesta¬ 
tion of sin committed, or sorrow for sins, the fear of 
God, faith in Christ, the new obedience, the love of God 
and of our neighbor.” 

A. MAN DECLARED SPIRITUALLY DEAD. 

The spiritual impotence involved in the story of the 
fall of man, is confirmed in the New Testament. Thus 
St. Paul writes of the Ephesians as having been dead in 
trespasses and sins (Eph. 2: 15), as also he speaks of 
the Colossians as having been dead through trespasses 
and the uncircumcision of their flesh (Col. 2: 13). So 
likewise in the parable of the prodigal son, the prodigal 
is represented as having been dead (Luke 15:24, 32). 
And thus even by implication it is evident that there is 
no ability in spiritual things left to the unregenerate or 
spiritually dead soul. As a corpse is powerless in the 
physical realm, so is a spiritually dead soul in the spirit¬ 
ual realm. Indeed, such a spiritually dead soul is wholly 
outside the realm of the spiritual kingdom and therefore 
has no capacities for exercise in it. It is this fact that 


41 


Jesus so strikingly asserts in his conversation with 
Nicodemus, in which he declares, “Except one be born 
anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God... Except one 
be bom of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the 
kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh; 
and that which is bora of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3: 
3-6). It is the ignoring of this great spiritual truth that 
has caused so much confusion and misunderstanding as 
to the doctrine of man’s impotence. Indeed, without the 
light of this truth a correct understanding of this sub¬ 
ject is impossible. 

B. HIS UNDERSTANDING SAID TO BE DARKENED. 

Because the natural man is outside the spiritual king¬ 
dom and therefore without spiritual powers, or is spiri¬ 
tually dead, it must logically follow that he cannot un« 
aided by the Holy Spirit understand God’s revelation of 
Himself and His gracious promises. And this we find 
to be the clear teaching of Scripture. Thus St. Paul 
says, “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and 
he cannot know them, because they are spiritually 
judged” (1 Cor. 2: 14). This is also set forth in the 
words immediately preceding: “We speak God’s wisdom 
in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, 
which God foreordained before the worlds unto our 
glory: which none of the rulers of this world hath 
known. . . For who among men knoweth the things of 
a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? 
even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit 
of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but 
the spirit which is from God; that we might know the 
things that were freely given us of God. Which things 
also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom 
teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiri¬ 
tual things with spiritual words” (1 Cor. 2:7-13). So 
also he speaks of the Gentiles, as “being darkened in 
their understanding, alienated from the life of God, be- 


42 


cause of the ignorance that is in them, because of the 
hardening of their heart” (Eph. 4: 18). Other similar 
passages are Matthew 11: 27 and 1 Corinthians 12: 3. 
The same is expressed in the further words to the 
Ephesians, “Ye were once darkness, but are now light in 
the Lord” (Eph. 5:8). So also in the wonderful intro¬ 
duction to his Gospel, St. John says, “In him was life; 
and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth 
in darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. . . 
There was the true light, even the light which lighteth 
every man coming into the world” (John 1: 5-8). 

It is because of this fact of darkness, darkness of the 
understanding, that the ascended and glorified Lord in 
calling Paul to the apostleship commissioned him to go 
to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes, that they may turn 
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto 
God” (Acts 26: 18). And this truth of man’s inability 
to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is re¬ 
echoed by St. Paul in such words as these, “For the word 
of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto 
us who are saved it is the power of God. . . Hath not God 
made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that 
in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom 
knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the 
foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe” 
(1 Cor. 1: 18-21). Thus the wisdom of this world can¬ 
not include the deep things of the spiritual life and the 
spiritual world. It belongs to a lower order, by its very 
nature, than the wisdom of God. Hence God’s method 
of redemption is to the worldly wise (Greeks) a stumb¬ 
ling block and unto the Gentiles foolishness (1 Cor. 
1:23-25). Therefore St. Paul would know nothing 
among the Corinthians save Christ Jesus and Him cruci¬ 
fied. And yet he says, “We speak wisdom, however, 
among them that are fullgrown: yet a wisdom not of 
this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are com¬ 
ing to nought: but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, 
even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God fore- 


43 


ordained before the worlds unto our glory” (1 Cor. 
2:6-7). 


C. FAITH DECLARED TO BE THE GIFT OF GOD. 

For the same logical reason as that on account of 
which the natural man cannot understand God’s revela¬ 
tion and the things of the spiritual kingdom, it must also 
follow that he cannot believe that revelation and rise by 
faith to God. Thus the power to appropriate redemp¬ 
tion, no less than the provision of that redemption, must 
be the work of God. And with this conclusion corres¬ 
ponds the teaching of Scripture, which represents faith 
as itself wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Thus St. 
Paul says, “By grace have ye been saved through faith; 
and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 
2:8). And he says to the Philippians, “To you it hath 
been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe 
on him, but also to suffer on his behalf” (Phil. 1:29). 
And the Saviour Himself says, “This is the work of God 
that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6: 29). 
Thus even faith or belief in Christ is the gift of God. 
Hence this fact also that man’s salvation is wholly the 
work of God, testified to man’s spiritual impotence. 

D. ABILITY TO DO GOOD IN SPIRITUAL THINGS ASCRIBED TO GOD. 

With the inability to understand and to believe the 
things of the spiritual kingdom, the revelation of God’s 
will and of His love, must necessarily be associated man’s 
inability to do what is spiritually good. And this also 
is confirmed by Scripture. St. Paul says: “They that 
are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh. . . For the 
mind of the flesh is death. . . because the mind of the 
flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the 
law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are 
in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8: 5-8). Again he 
says: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit 


i * ■> 


« 


44 


against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the 
other; that ye may not do the things that ye would” 
(Gal. 5:17). Many other passages might be cited, 
such as Psalm 14: 1-3; 53: 1-3; Romans 3: 9-12; 7: 
14-25, to indicate that this is the unmistakable tenor of 
the teaching of Scripture generally. 

And this fact of man's inability to do good in spiritual 
matters is also emphasized in the many passages in 
which all ability to do good is ascribed to God. St. Paul 
declares, “And such confidence have we through Christ 
to God-ward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to 
account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency 
is from God” (2 Cor. 3: 4-5). And he says also to the 
Philippians, “It is God who worketh in you both to will 
and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2: 13), and 
that “he who began a good work in you will perfect it 
until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). Indeed, 
Jesus Himself declares, “He that abideth in me, and I in 
him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye 
can do nothing” (John 15:5). 

E. man’s spiritual impotence called a bondage. 

In perfect consistency with its teaching as to man's 
inability with reference to spiritual things, to under¬ 
stand, believe and do, Scripture sets forth his impotence 
under the figure of bondage. Thus Jesus says: “Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. . 
Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin” 
(John 8: 32-34). And St. Paul speaks of the old man as 
being crucified with Christ, “that the body of sin might 
be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage 
to sin” (Rom. 6:6). And there is a continual struggle 
for full emancipation even on the part of the regenerate, 
as St. Paul says, “For we know that the law is spiritual: 
but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I 
know not: for not what I would, that do I practice; but 
what I hate, that I do” (Rom. 7: 14-15). And, once 
more, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 


f f < 


45 


but I see a different law in my members, warring against 
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
under the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched 
man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of 
this death” (Rom. 7:22-24). Strong words from the 
noble apostle Paul! 

F, SUMMARY OF SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY. 

Thus when the sentence of death was pronounced upon 
man it went into immediate effect in the spiritual death 
that has reigned over unregenerate mankind ever since. 
Freedom in spiritual things was lost with the divine 
image. And in that spiritual death darkness of the 
understanding has reigned. Nor can the natural man 
rise in faith to God, or do what is spiritually good. Man 
became the servant of sin, and, as history and experience 
also testify, he is under the power of evil. He is indeed 
still able to do good in external matters, as our Confes¬ 
sors acknowledge; but, without a new heart and sancti¬ 
fied will, such outward goodness profiteth nothing. Of 
this we have a remarkable confirmation in the thirteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians, as for instance in the 
verse, “And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it pro¬ 
fiteth me nothing.” Unless the outward deed is 
prompted by something higher than mere desire to bene¬ 
fit, namely, by an impulse of love as the result of the re¬ 
generating grace of the love of God, it is an outward 
deed only. Nor does it have any justifying merit before 
God. So a Pharisaic blameless keeping of the letter of 
the commandments, such as was even that of St. Paul 
before his conversion, is not righteousness such as is ex¬ 
emplified by a keeping of the spirit of the commandments 
out of the fear and love of God because of His love to us 
in Christ Jesus. The rich young ruler’s mere outward 
keeping of the commandments did not afford him an en¬ 
trance into the kingdom of God, even as a person might 
acknowledge certain great doctrines of the Bible as in¬ 
tellectually tenable and yet be far from the Kingdom, 


46 


Thus a distinction must be made between moral or 
natural goodness, that is, goodness only because of its 
good effects, and spiritual goodness because of its 
source in the regenerated heart and the sanctified will. 


G. POWER OF EVIL LEFT TO UNREGENERATE MAN. 

Apart from that ability or freedom to choose or do 
what is morally or naturally good, there is of course also 
the freedom left to choose or do what is evil. Thus we 
still have power to reject the Gospel grace. This is im¬ 
plied in Christ’s lament over Jerusalem, “0 Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them 
that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered 
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chick¬ 
ens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23: 37). 
Thus amidst spiritual death there is the possibility of 
continued activity in trespasses and sins, “Wherein,” St. 
Paul said to the Ephesians, “ye once walked according 
to the course of this world.” And of such general walk¬ 
ing in trespasses and sins by deliberate choice, on the 
part of the natural man, the Old Testament and the his¬ 
tory of the heathen world, not to speak of those in Chris¬ 
tian lands, bear abundant witness. 

Indeed, freedom or ability to choose and do evil is im¬ 
plied in the very idea of sin. For, without the voluntary 
element, sin would not be sin. Hence it follows that, in 
a real sense, the will is both free and not free, free or 
able to choose evil but not to choose spiritual good. In 
other words, the soul has certain powers pertaining to 
that which is evil which it does not have with reference 
to that which is good. It may be said that the liberty or 
power to do evil goes with the soul’s freedom or ability 
as to natural or external things, even including merely 
natural goodness. And as both of these pertain to this 
world of man in his fallen state, they may well be asso¬ 
ciated, as belonging together. And there is perhaps 
an intimation of the recognition of this association in the 
extreme position of some theologians who regarded even 


47 


moral goodness as nothing but evil. And to this conclu¬ 
sion it would be but a short step from its classification 
with evil under the same freedom or ability. 

Indeed, this association of outward righteousness with 
liberty or ability as to the doing of evil, appears con¬ 
firmed also in passages in which both seem to be implied. 
Thus Jehovah said to Cain, “If thou doest well, shall it 
not be lifted up ? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth 
at the door” (Gen. 4:7). And He said to Israel, “See, 
I have set before thee this day life and good, and death 
and evil” (Deut. 30: 15). The same is implied in many 
other passages, especially those of exhortation to Israel, 
in which the Old Testament abounds. Thus also St. Paul 
exhorts the Romans, “Let not sin therefore reign in your 
mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof” 
(Rom. 6: 12). And, for that matter, even in man’s re¬ 
generate state he has this twofold freedom, as is possibly 
involved in the verse just quoted, but as is more definitely 
set forth in what follows: “Neither present your mem¬ 
bers unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but 
present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and 
your members as instruments of righteousness unto 
God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye 
are not under lew, but under grace” (Rom. 6: 13-14). 

3 Distinction Between Freedom and Ability 

The various points in the Scriptural testimony which 
I have set forth have to do with the ability, or rather in¬ 
ability, of unregenerate man, no less than with the free¬ 
dom of the will, or rather want of freedom. Indeed, in 
a sense, the latter may be said to be involved in the 
former. And although I have so far treated these two 
together, because ordinarily the distinction might not be 
imperative for our purpose, yet, I believe that I should 
at least call attention to the distinction between them. 

Though in many instances, both in the natural and in 
the spiritual realm, they no doubt in effect coincide, 
there are many instances in which freedom to will does 


48 


not imply ability to perform, or in which inability to do 
need not involve want of freedom to will in that partic¬ 
ular. From what I have said it is seen that the term 
freedom of the will, in the restricted sense, should not be 
confounded with freedom of the agent. Nor must 
ability of the will be confounded with ability of the 
agent to act. It seems that in some of the earlier eccle¬ 
siastical controversies there was some confusion on this 
point, the terms being often used interchangeably as if 
they were absolutely synonymous or meant exactly the 
same thing. Thus, although Augustine is generally 
spoken of as if his discussion had to do with the subject 
of freedom as such, yet it apparently had to do more 
with ability, or rather inability, of the person than with 
freedom of the will in the modern sense, as also to some 
extent had the famous discussions of the Reformation 
period. 

I have already pointed out that, as the will is an es¬ 
sential faculty of man, as much as is his intellect, he 
must retain it in his fallen state, however weakened it 
may be and however unreliable because of his darkened 
understanding. Rut, of course, one cannot will concern¬ 
ing that of which he does not know. And, indeed, to 
speak of the will as not free is to speak of it as not will. 
It is this perhaps more than anything else that consti¬ 
tutes man a rational personality. And, for that matter, 
reason must necessarily have associated with it the 
faculty of will nor can either exist without the other. 
Hence man’s will is still free from compulsion from with¬ 
out. This fact has been recognized by some of our most 
eminent theologians, and is involved even in our Article. 
But, as is shown by the phraseology, our Confessions 
generally treat of freedom and ability together. Upon 
a close examination of the wording of Scripture it is seen 
that it is, quite frequently, the inability of man that is 
set forth. Thus in his exclusion from Eden the former 
occupants were deprived of their ability to eat of the 
tree of life. And Christ says, “Apart from me ye can do 
nothing” (John 15:5). 


49 


U Is Any One Predestinated to be Lost? 

The total inability of man in helping to effect his own 
salvation, and in general his inability as to things spirit¬ 
ual, naturally involves the much debated question of pre¬ 
destination. For, if two equally lost sinners both receive 
the same Gospel and the one is saved and the other is 
not, there must apparently be a cause somewhere for this 
difference of destiny. If both are equally spiritually im¬ 
potent it at first thought seems quite plausible that the 
cause of this difference cannot be in the person himself. 
Hence the conclusion has been drawn that this cause 
must be in God, by whose supposed arbitrary omnipo¬ 
tence the one is saved and the other is not. And as the 
Gospel grace has been arranged for from eternity before 
the actual creation of man, some theologians like Calvin 
have contended that all men, even including Adam and 
Eve, before the fall, were predestinated in the eternal 
counsels of God; and these have therefore been called 
prelapsarians. Thus some have supposedly been fore¬ 
ordained to be saved and others have been foreordained 
to be lost. 

Others like Augustine have held that this predestina¬ 
tion includes only the descendants of Adam and Eve, or 
those after the fall; and these have therefore been called 
postlapsarians. It was this view apparently that Luther 
held in his earlier days. It deeply depressed him during 
his monastery life, as at times he firmly believed that he 
was one of those predestinated to be lost. But from this 
depression he was delivered as from the dead by new 
light and hope which gradually came to him from the 
Gospel of the Love of God. From Augustine he gradu¬ 
ally turned to Paul, according to whom predestination is 
not absolute or unconditional, but conditioned upon God's 
foreknowledge: “Whom he foreknew, he also foreor¬ 
dained to be conformed to the image of his Son. . . and 
wjiom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom 
he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, 
them he also glorified” (Rom. 8: 29-30). It is thus held 


50 


by our Church that there is a predestination only in the 
case of the saved, but not in that of the lost. They are 
lost, not because of any decree on the part of God, but 
on account of their own wilful rejection of the offered 
grace and their resistance of the Holy Spirit. 

For, as we have already seen, freedom or ability to re¬ 
ject God’s grace and resist the Holy Spirit, still remains 
to unregenerate man. In addition to the passage of 
Christ’s lamentation over Jerusalem, the power to re¬ 
sist the Spirit was set forth by Stephen in the words, 
“Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye 
do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so 
do ye” (Acts 7:51). And St. Paul exhorts even the 
Ephesians, who were presumably Christians, “Grieve 
not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto 
the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30), as also he does 
the Thessalonians, “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. 
5: 19). It is thus seen that the freedom or power of re¬ 
sisting the Spirit continues even in the regenerate. 

That God is not the cause that some to whom the Gos¬ 
pel call comes and with whom the Spirit pleads are lost, is 
also evident from the fact that they were already lost be¬ 
fore that call and pleading. It is thus not that they were 
lost because of a supposedly ineffective call on the part 
of God, but that they were not saved and so continued in 
their lost condition because they refused to be saved. 
And, that man might remain a free moral agent, he is 
not compelled to accept God’s offer, to believe and be 
saved. 

But, then, as even faith is itself the work of the Spirit 
of God, as we have seen, would it not follow that there¬ 
fore the want of faith in some and thus their rejection 
by God, is the work of God? By no means, for, as 
already stressed, man has freedom and ability to resist 
the Spirit, and therefore this very gift which the Spirit 
would, and indeed alone can, impart. Thus the lost are 
themselves the cause of their continued lost condition, 
although there is a sense in which by permitting them 
God may truly be said to rule in and overrule all the 


51 


acts of man, as it is written, “0 Jehovah, I know that the 
way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walk- 
eth to direct his steps” (Jer. 10: 23). But this concur¬ 
ring Providence and this direction of man are not such 
as to unmake man as a rational and voluntary respons¬ 
ible agent, or such as to make God the cause of personal 
deeds and misdeeds, nor must they be pressed as an argu¬ 
ment for unconditional or absolute predestination by the 
sovereignty of Almighty God. Hence St. Paul says 
truly, “Work out your own salvation with fear and 
trembling, for it is God who worketh in you both to will 
and to work, for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:12-13). 
And yet He does not do so for that which is evil, and of 
course not in the rejection of the offered grace and in the 
despising of the Spirit of God. The doctrine of man’s 
free agency is therefore not in conflict with that of 
God’s sovereignty. Man wills and acts and God rules in 
and through his actions. This expresses the relation of 
man’s freedom to God’s omnipotence. And only when 
man’s will is fully attuned to the truth and will of God 
can it be said to be spiritually free, as Jesus said, “And 
ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free” (John 8: 32). 

5 Is there any Cooperation in His Regeneration on 

the Part of the Individual? 

Several of the Points made naturally suggest the 
question as to the extent, if any, to which unregenerate 
man may be said to cooperate in his regeneration. And, 
although this point may be considered as covered 
already, because it has been a storm-center in more than 
one theological controversy and because it is of vital im¬ 
portance to a clear understanding of the subject, I shall 
add a word to what I may already have said bearing 
upon it. 

As the lost are by their own negative attitude the 
whole cause of their continued lost condition and there¬ 
fore of their final condemnation, it would at first thought 


52 


seem plausible that the will of the saved must also be a 
factor in cooperating with the Holy Spirit in their re- 
generation and salvation by its very non-resistance. It 
was this suggestion that apparently caused Melanchthon 
later on to regard the will as a factor in the appropria¬ 
tion of grace and salvation. 

It is true that the regenerated cooperate with the Holy 
Spirit in the bringing forth of the fruits of righteous¬ 
ness. But this is not true of the unregenerate, except in 
so far as their attitude or act when the Gospel comes to 
them is an expression of freedom or ability such as is 
manifested with reference to things external. For, in 
its last analysis, such attitude or act with reference to 
the externally offered Gospel is of the nature of an atti¬ 
tude or act as to things external. Hence it follows that 
the will of man, in what I have called spiritual freedom, 
is not an active factor in the Spirit’s work of regenera¬ 
tion through the Word, a work that is necessarily 
spiritual. There is thus no Scriptural nor logical ground 
for synergism, as there is no spiritual cooperation of the 
soul with divine grace in the work of salvation. 

I have now developed the fact somewhat at length 
that, within certain limitations, man is free with respect 
to the kingdom of nature. I have presented the teach¬ 
ing of the Reformers as to the natural man’s impotence 
in spiritual things and have shown that their position is 
in full harmony with the unmistakable testimony of the 
Word of God. I have pointed out, moreover, that this 
view is wholly in accord with a true psychology and with 
consistent reason. Nor is this theological doctrine of 
man’s spiritual impotence or spiritual bondage found, 
upon thorough thought and study, to be at all in conflict 
with the philosophical doctrine of his natural freedom. 
And thus what this Article XVIII of our great Confes¬ 
sion so unequivocally sets forth, we may still acknowl¬ 
edge as our confession on the much debated subject as to 
the freedom of the human will. 

St. Paul, Minn. 


> 


A 






















jj jjl III IIII ill l RESS 

0 027 841 901 0 






































































































■ 









































